I know Christmas has already come and gone but I was so happy with that picture that I'm keeping it in this blog post :D

2016 is coming to end. This year has been one exciting ride for XIVDB. I released v2 one year and one month ago, it did not go so well... However! I am very proud of where the site has come in a year. It's been a lot of work, a lot of conversation with you guys and to help celebrate where the site has gone, here are some big things that happened from your suggestions:

Make it super easy to provide feedback about any area of the site.

Provide a multi-content search feature with a huge array of unique filters.

Heavily translated into all 4 core languages, the entire site is translated! (English, German, French and Japanese).

A super quick "patch update" process that is almost a 1 button click update!

A very detailed open API for all content on the site, including searching and character information.

Large multi-server character tracking and profile information.

Tools built on-demand: Gearsets, Shopping Cart and Lore Finder are all community requests.

New: Super awesome way to map all Enemies and NPCs in Eorzea very easily.

New: Achievement Ranking!

I think XIVDB is a decent site and helps players in a variety of ways, it isn't as detailed as a wiki and aims to provide a set of specs to different types of content. It is a great tool to your FFXIV belt of go-to resources; alongside GarlandTools and GamerEscape!

I don't get to work on XIVDB full time unfortunately, my main job has been extremely busy this Christmas which has lead to this update going out a bit more delayed. (Also FF15 had something to do with it :D)

Keeping motivation going is difficult on a project like this. I've been working on FF Sites for 6 years! (This site specifically for over 3 years). It all started with my little Lodestone parser, moving all the way to a full-fledged database and character tracking. Such a huge difference from back then and I'm so glad to be part of the FFXIV Community.

I give a huge thank you to everyone who uses this site, 2017 will hopefully make it an absolute beast of a data source in preparation for the next expansion! I'd like to give personal thanks to a few key players who have helped me greatly:

Saeris Illyan - Phoenix

Being awesome, being German, helping me a lot with visuals and support.

Content Pages:

General:

Content page tabs have been moved to the left.

All tabs will show even if there is no data for that tab.

Tab pages will be faint if there is no content, making those with content obvious.

I know this change will take some getting used to, please try! The main reason is I plan to add a lot more tabs on pages for all different types of information and having them horizontal really restricted how many tabs a page could have. Now there is no limit and they're always in the same order, every time!

The latest content comment will be shown on the content details section.

This includes: who posted it, when and which patch the comment was posted on.

The latest screenshot will appear on the right side of the content details pages.

API URLs have been added to the right side of content pages.

Table "Paging" has been removed, all content will show in 1 big giant list to avoid extra clicks

Content with long pieces of lore are now easier to read with line breaks:

All icons for game content should look a lot fancier now!

Enemies:

A "Maps" tab has been added

This will show the locations of all enemies in the area that have been recorded.

Level, HP and MP have been added for mapped enemies.

This includes the average HP/MP.

NPCs:

A Maps tab has been added

Similar to enemies, it will show the locations of NPCs that have been recorded.

Instances:

A Maps tab has been added

Shows all maps for the instance.

Shows all enemies in the instance.

Loot tables have been simplified.

Grouped by Category > Type.

Ordered by Item Level.

Tomestone Rewards have been fixed and grouped. (eg Multiple rewards of Poetics will bunch to a total amount)

Also, includes the weekly limit cap if there is one.

Banner images have been made super sexy.

Places:

A list of all quests in a map has been added.

A list of all enemies in a map has been added.

A list of all NPCs in a map has been added.

A list of all gathering nodes on a map have been added.

A map + all map markers have been added to places.

Items:

Instance tab has been visually improved.

Rather than being a small list it now contains detailed information.

Quests:

Next/Prev quest displays have been made more visually pleasing. (Rather than a table)

The visual display of quest dialogue/objectives and journal entries has been made clearer

"Rewards" has been renamed "Items" + it has the same visual style as everywhere else on the site.

Website:

Achievement ranking has been added, includes:

The top 100 characters of all servers.

The top 100 characters per server.

Updates every midnight (UTC). A relative time is shown on the page itself.

The header has been adjusted.

XIVDB twitter link removed.

Added the current player's character avatar (This is also a link to the characters page)

The homepage has been adjusted:

The "events" tab has been moved down to the right hand menu as it was not being used.

The "blogs" tab has been removed. This had 0 usage.

The rotating banners have been moved to a new tab "FFXIV News",

This is because some banners did not include much information as they usually contained a news post.

Now includes all news post information for easier reading

The "Maps" tool has been pulled separate from the site.

NO ads, full-screen size maps.

All mapped markers added.

The language selection is now under the "XIVDB" menu.

Community > Screenshots page has been tweaked. Also shows up to 250 images.

Community > Comments now shows 250 comments.

Profile pages have been updated!

A cleaner look, using less header space.

Includes the total number of comments/screenshots.

Made screenshots bigger for easier viewing.

Cleaned the formatting around comments.

Cleaned up the layout and styles in the Shopping Cart tool.

Added the ability to update the amount of items.

Increase the max quantity of an item from 100 to 99999

Implemented tabs for: Cart / Items / Save / Load

Text colours have been adjusted to be more vibrant (links being much brighter and easier to view)

200 New translations added, 350 areas now translated!

API:

Adjusted how arrays are handled to ensure strict typed languages (eg: C#) can handle the data.